Virtual reality based immersive telepresence system for remote conversation and collaboration

Abstract

We developed a Virtual Reality (VR) based telepresence system providing novel immersive experience for remote conversation and collaboration. By wearing VR headsets, all the participants can be gathered into a same virtual space, with 3D cartoon Avatars representing them. The 3D VR Avatars can realistically emulate the head postures, facial expressions and hand motions of the participants, enabling them to conduct enjoyable group-to-group conversations with people spatially isolated from them. Moreover, our VR telepresence system offers conspicuously new manners for remote collaboration. For example, users can play PPT slides or watch videos together, or they can cooperate on solving a math problem by calculating on a virtual blackboard, all of which can be hardly achieved using conventional video-based telepresence system. Experiments show that our system can provide unprecedented immersive experience for tele-conversation and new possibilities for remote collaboration.